PhilCoffee

The top students with the strongest writing sample usually get into top PhD programs, so it may be helpful to compare your materials, especially the writing sample, to your classmates'. But given your description, you'll be fine.

Same problem, but nobody reached out to me. In my case, the portal still shows that a letter is missing, but the overall status shows a "complete" (it showed incomplete days ago). Just contacted Diana, who responed quickly and said nothing is missing. Weird.

Yeah, I mean I didn't just rely on the assumption that they would reach out. I actually reached out and got no response, and that's the frustrating part.

Hey, thank you guys. The sense of frustratedness comes mainly from the fact that I contacted 2 staffs on the philosophy department and get no response. Maybe I reached out to the wrong guy, but I thought if that was the case I would get redirected.

@Outer Heaven Yeah. And he says "no". So I don't know what's going on. Probably I should wait, maybe they'll find the letter, or they'll reach out otherwise.

I feel confused about Pitt. Their portal says that one of my already submitted LoR is missing, and it's been like 20 days since the letters are due. There hasn't been any correspondence to discuss the missing letter. So I've sent messages within the portal to the graduate department and nobody responds. I've also contacted two administratives in the philosophy department, and, again, nobody responds. This just feels awful.

Generally there is increase in applicants for departments, so there could be delays, but that's not necessarily the case. And the results that have come out so far seem to suggest that there are no delays. Since the prediction on the spreadsheet is based on past records, it probably will be accurate. We'll see.

I think the norm is to waive it, but I don't know whether not waiving the right would actually hurt your prospects. Maybe it only hurts your relationship with your letter writers, or maybe it hurts both? Curious about this.

Yeah. I think we just have different predictions about those strongest applicant's selection of prograns. I was just assuming that they would apply for programs that they usually apply for plus a couple of schools like Tufts or NIU, or some top 30 programs. And I actually agree that these applicants will end up getting in the places that they usually would get in.

@PolPhil Hey! The thought is just that the applicants that get accepted to multiple programs will reject most of them but one. And if they're applying to more places, they will end up rejecting more, which makes guys on the waitlists have better chances to get accepted. It will be harder for many to get on the waitlists from the first place, though.

If the total philosophy applicants remain steady while everyone is applying to more programs (due to a sense of insecurity, for instance), then one's chancess of getting accepted off the waitlist will go higher. Does this make sense?

Does that mean GRE report is optional, or GRE report will not be considered? Guess these are quite differet—it is good either way, though.

I mean a shere possibility, though.

What will happen if only 2 letter are submitted while the program requires 3? Will that simply get one turned down?

@PolPhil Well, something like that. Like "The department is strong in (some) my areas of interest, and is also strong in X, Y and Z which I feel excited to learn more about in grad school". I hear from one of my letter writers that this mentioning is too general to be helpful at all.

A (often discussed, I suppose) question about statement of purpose: if one does not go very specific about faculty members' research, is it still a good thing to mention the general strengths of a program? Or, will that look to the committee like doing only very superficial research about the program?

Hi jrmgoodin, thanks! I've also emailed them, and they said roughly the same thing. Each student is assigned at least one assistantship for one semester, which is $3,200. And each gets some remission of tuition. But given that the tuition is $51,940, Brandeis is quite expensive.

Does anyone know about Brandeis? I think it has some fully-funded positions, but perhaps not for all in the cohort. And the information I found about its tuition suggests that it is really expensive (https://www.brandeis.edu/gsas/financing/cost.html).

By the way, does anyone have an idea about what generally contributes to a great fit between you and an MA programs? Say, one has to decide between two great MA programs, one has better placement but has not that impressing faculty (but still a fit), while the other has professors that interest you a lot but is not that strong at placement. Is the fit with the latter one going to enhance you a lot, despite the general placement records? Or is it better just to choose the former?

Many Canadian MA programs simply don't list their placement records. SFU and Calgary have placement, and they seem amazingly strong.

It seems to me that there is nothing to worry about with your freshman year performance. Research carefully about the terminal MA programs, and apply some of them. Maybe you can choose some that actually placed students into CU, and fit your interest.

Curious about whether people generally double space their endnotes?

Are the notes included when you guys talking about page lengths? In that case, I wonder do anyone attempt to restrict page length by reducing the notes, or by not using double-space with notes?

I think the GPA is okay. And schools would like to see GPAs that are going up, since that implies that you're improving or that you're hard-working. MA programs in North America are better than those in UK generally for people who want to persue phd degrees.

I think Glasperlenspieler is right. There are cases that I know where people get two MA degrees, and both in philosophy. But that's because they do their first MA in the native country (in non-English world), and do the scond one in the US. The MA programs may not admit you. Even if they do, given that your program has a good placement record, doing a second MA might not do anything good when applying for PhD, with respect to the impressions.